"We need more harlequins, fewer ticktockmen."

Said Icepick in last night's thread about Boston banning drinking games in bars. He began: I recently read "The Scouring of the Sh...

The 200 greatest novels, stories, and poems...

... for $2.99. (The Complete Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction, "carefully selected by the world's leading experts on literature a...

"When we travel, though, we are asking for hospitality. There’s great vulnerability in this."

"It also requires considerable strength." To be a good guest — like being a good host — one needs to be secure in one’s own premi...

"I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear..."

"... nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary." I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of ...

America's "literary flowering" was "a rebellion against what was thought of as academic, effete and indoors-y in English writing."

So how can a real, American literary artist take a job as a creative writing professor? Asks David Gessner. [I]t’s hard to imagine [Thoreau]...

Solitude and the lake.

I took my walk to work yesterday down by the lake -- Lake Mendota. That makes the walk a few blocks longer, but the lake has its mystic pull...

The Amsterdam Notebooks—Page 26.

It's Day 26 of this 35 day project . ( The set thus far. ) I'm in the museum, but passing the time by reading. If you're followi...

The Amsterdam Notebooks—Page 5.

It's Day 6 of this 35 day project . See the set thus far here . In this installment, I finally make my way into the Van Gogh Museum , wh...

When did Prince start speaking in aphorisms?

The NYT quotes Prince : "I always knew I had a relationship with God. But I wasn't sure God had a relationship with me." This ...